Music Review

USC’s Alan Hancock Building is eccentric.

Capt. Hancock--a scion of the wealthy L.A. family, oceanographer and cellist in the Los Angeles Philharmonic--had built it in 1940 to incorporate his loves: music, biology, railroads and his mother. Generations of music students have known it for its handsome, if utilitarian, auditorium / classroom and its faded biology display cases. Few, however, realized the captain had also installed his mother’s lavish music room, hauled intact from her Hancock Park mansion when it was torn down. USC maintains it in pristine condition, hidden behind the green room. The disabled electric train set in the basement, alas, is no more.

Hancock is now less eccentric. Only one biology display remains, a monster crab guarding the entrance to the captain’s mother’s music room. And the 300-seat auditorium has been modernized. It was dedicated Friday night as the Alfred Newman Recital Hall, after the noted film composer whose widow helped fund the $2-million architectural and acoustic renovation.

The funky charm is gone. The side-wall murals, which were of little historic importance and turned out to be painted on peeling paper, could not be saved. Special acoustic fabric backs the stage and covers the seats. New lights and a wood canopy hang above the stage; the side walls now have electronically activated drapes to alter the acoustics. The ceiling has been opened, with exposed ducts painted black. The architectural firm SMP / SHG Inc. handled the renovation, bowing to acoustical dictates of Kirkegaard & Associates, which has had a string of recent successes in the acoustic design of Ozawa Hall in Tanglewood and the acoustic improvements of Davies Hall in San Francisco and Chicago Symphony Center.

The dedication concert demonstrated the versatility of the hall, with a sampling of USC’s Early Music Ensemble, its Chamber Jazz Ensemble and Chamber Choir. It also provided two examples of Alfred Newman’s music and an acknowledgment of the Newman dynasty, which includes his film-composer sons, David and Thomas, his violinist-composer daughter, Maria, and his nephew, Randy, the pop star and film composer.

It was not always a prudent evening for showing off the Newmans, the USC School of Music or the hall in their best lights. Clearly more politics than common programming sense was involved. But the scope was interesting, ranging from atrocious to superb in music, performance and sound. This is a hall with complex needs, as the concert--probably inadvertently--pointed out.

The Newmans’ music demonstrated the extremes. The hall has a wonderful presence for the right performer of the right music. Cynthia Jansen Theo’s rich mezzo-soprano resonated fluidly in “Miriam’s Song” from the 1953 film “The Robe.” Sebastien Koch’s fine piano playing had great immediacy in his jazz solo from “Street Scene.” But Maria Newman’s sentimental “Songs on Motherhood”--based on ghastly poetry by her grandmother from Mississippi (“What fantastic mental train / Dashes through your pygmy brain?”)--hurt the ear in an overstated tangle of high frequencies, for soprano, clarinet, violin and harp.

Newman Hall seems to play tricks--sometimes flattering, sometimes not. In the jazz ensemble, the piano was nearly inaudible against drums, sensitively amplified guitar and bass. But the piano played by Morten Lauridsen in an excerpt of his enchanting “Les Chansons des Roses,” sung by the Chamber Choir, sparkled--as did the two dozen fresh voices. With side drapes open, the hall clearly picked up the masterful nuances of James Tyler’s lute in his Early Music Ensemble performance of a Pergolesi sinfonia. With drapes closed, it seemed to drop the lowest cello notes (played by Ronald Leonard) in two movements from Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in D Minor.

But this isn’t a hall for critics or pros. In a moving speech, the composer Frederick Lesemann told of the thousands of students who had played in this space, of the millions of hours of rehearsal time those performances represented, and of the profound effect that the concerts had on students and their families. His words, eloquent and emotional, choked up speaker and audience. Newman Hall is for those students to break in, and to make of it what they will. The rest is fancy window dressing.